What do you think about babies and how they learn to speak? Do they know any grammar rule? Do they know any phonetics hint? Surely, they don't. So why do children master such difficult languages and Arabic, Japanese or Russian with no effort? What have adults forgotten that made them able to master their own language? Thus, because of the fact they've forgotten it they can hardly learn at least one more language.

The answer is as simple as you have never thought of. They just do not bother. That's true, a child doesn't care if it pronounces sounds properly or not, or if it uses the right tense or wrong one. The child just has its aim - it should make everything possible to make those big guys understand it and do what it wants. And it doesn't matter if it says „she have" instead of „she has" - anyway, it'll be understood.

Another thing is that a child enjoys everything it does. While its fantasy is wide and creative, it doesn't care about stamps and usual things. The kid grows, and its growth is a permanent game when it learns new things just wouthout the aim to learn them. It learns new things just because it plays the game and enjoys it.

So we've found two elements of successful learning:

The goal is the fuel.
Enjoying is a wheel.
Now think about yourself and realize how you can use these two principles in your study process. I don't want to say about everyone, however, the most of people can read and like to read. Besides, reading can be a perfect communicative process when a reader listens to a story an author tells. Although he doesn't hear anything, he speaks in his mind, he repeats the words of author, he understands and memorizes them. Hence, reading (in addition to active listening) can be the best way of learning to speak a live language.

So here are some tips for you if you'd like to learn a language easily and quickly:

Read, read and again read.
Your goal shouldn't be to learn new words, to learn how to construct sentences etc. Instead, your goal should be to understand the meaning of the book.
But don't refer dictionary for each word you don't know. Believe me, if this word will apear about 5 times throughout the book, you'll understand its meaning without any dictionary. Thus, you'll memorize it for ages.
Don't force yourself if you find teh book boring. Just take another book and read it.
The more you read, the better you understand the logic of the language.
The better you understand the logic, the easier you move forward with your skills.
It's simple enough, isn't it? Just think that this method works for anywone who at least:

Knows alphabet of the language he'd like to learn.
Knows how to read words.
Likes to read.
That's all. Don't you beleive me? So try it yourself and you'll see that language learning can be a fun and pleasant process. And what's more, it can be successful. Isn't it the best motivation?

Al Polonski
http://learnrussian.hut1.ru